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At Disney, It’s Tough to Find a Chief

LAS VEGAS — At a convention of movie theater owners here on Tuesday, Walt Disney Studios displayed plenty of fanfare, trotting out Johnny Depp to promote his 2013 remake of “The Lone Ranger” and hiring 11 bagpipe players to herald “Brave,” a film about a Scottish princess.

What the studio notably did not have on hand was a leader. Last week Rich Ross resigned under pressure as Disney’s movie chairman. But no matter. The studio’s powerful subchiefs, John Lasseter of Pixar, Kevin Feige of Marvel and Sean Bailey of live-action Disney movies, smoothly presented their slates of coming films.

Their presence, and Mr. Ross’s absence, crystallized the difficult questions that confront Disney as it starts the arduous task of finding a new chairman, with no obvious candidates. Does running Walt Disney Studios require a brand manager, or a strong movie hand?

Can Robert A. Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, find someone stronger than those division chiefs, a statesman who can navigate Hollywood’s murderous upper ranks? Or will he turn to another air traffic controller like Mr. Ross, someone primarily charged with keeping the egos from clashing over release dates and shared marketing resources?

“It’s either an incredibly powerful job or no job at all,” said Harold Vogel, a media analyst and the author of “Entertainment Industry Economics.” “That may speak to the unusual lack of candidates to succeed Ross.”

In the days of the great studio chiefs — Louis B. Mayer, Lew Wasserman — movie operations were still autonomous, allowing the executives in charge to wield absolute power. Even when consolidation swept deeper into Hollywood in the 1980s, studio chiefs still reigned supreme because, as Mr. Vogel put it, “The movies were still big enough parts of the puzzle that they could sway the stock prices and earnings of the conglomerates that were buying them.”

Today, studios are embedded so deeply in media and technology giants like Sony and Viacom that their activities barely register on Wall Street. Disney had total revenue of $41 billion last year, but only $6.4 billion came from the studio. When Mr. Ross left, or even when Disney said last month that “John Carter,” one of the movies made on his watch, would require a $200 million write-down, the company’s stock price remained stable.

As studios have become less prominent, the talent pool of executives competing to run them has also receded, analysts say. Silicon Valley has added to the problem. Why run a movie studio when you can build the next YouTube? Add the movie industry’s difficulties — a dying DVD business, shrinking attendance in North America, social media undermining traditional marketing techniques — and the jobs are even less desirable.

When Mr. Iger last looked for a studio chairman, he had to turn to television. Mr. Ross had previously run Disney Channels Worldwide. But the challenge has not been unique to Disney. Faced in 2010 with finding a successor to Barry M. Meyer as chairman of Warner Brothers, Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, instead persuaded Mr. Meyer to postpone retirement until 2013.

Other studios, including Universal, have had problems finding top executives who have both creative and business credibility, two attributes that often do not coexist in one person.

But Disney does have one problem that is unique: its studio is organized in a way that makes the job of chairman unusually complicated.

Disney is set up to release about 15 movies a year, on par with Universal, 20th Century Fox and Paramount. But most of those movies come from units that primarily run independently, except for their distribution and marketing. Those units are Pixar, Marvel and a partnership with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios. Disney’s live-action label is set up to make five or six movies a year.

So when push came to shove, Mr. Ross in his best year would have been chairman of six movies. The rest of the job is managing marketing and release dates for the four brands — making sure the Pixar, Marvel and DreamWorks labels are getting along — while overseeing a music label (Hollywood Records) and Disney’s Broadway division, which has for years been run by Thomas Schumacher.

What senior movie executive wants to be chairman of six movies?

Mr. Iger, who has been traveling in China on business since the ouster of Mr. Ross, has told senior lieutenants that it could be weeks before he settles on a new leader. On Wednesday, a Disney spokesman declined to comment.

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Names that have been floating around Hollywood, including Mr. Feige of Marvel and Stacey Snider, a co-owner of DreamWorks and its chief executive, are unlikely to get the job even if they want it, according to people with knowledge of the matter who insisted on anonymity to preserve their relationship with Mr. Iger. Other potential candidates, including Alan Bergman, the respected president of Walt Disney Studios, are viewed as lacking the necessary swagger, these people said.

Mr. Iger’s decision to push out Mr. Ross before having a successor in place partly reflects the power of Hollywood’s gossip mill. The people close to Mr. Iger pointed out that conducting a search behind Mr. Ross’s back would quickly get back to him and humiliate and undermine him. They also said Mr. Iger believed that the studio was in good enough shape to operate without a chairman for a stretch, in no small part because of its strong division chiefs.

Mr. Iger’s ease may also reflect his own oversight of the studio, which appears to be much closer than many people in Hollywood realize. For instance, he urged Mr. Feige to add more humor to “The Avengers,” a superhero event film that opened in international markets on Wednesday and arrives in North America next week. He visits Pixar’s headquarters outside of San Francisco several times a month, and discusses scripts with important Disney partners like the producer Joe Roth, who is working on “Oz,” and Jerry Bruckheimer, whose Disney projects include “The Lone Ranger” and another “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie.

Still, Mr. Iger, who has described film as important fuel for the rest of the company’s products, like theme park rides and merchandise, will not want to wait too long to answer the questions hanging over Walt Disney Studios. “What is a Disney movie? What does it mean to be a Disney movie?” Mr. Bailey said during part of his presentation to theater owners on Tuesday. “It’s not an easy question to answer.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 26, 2012, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: At Disney, a Splintering of Power Makes It Tough to Find a Chief. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe